Warhammer 40,000 getting a 'colossal sandbox' action-RPG in 2016

NeocoreGames has announced Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr which is an action-RPG that’s being developed in collaboration with Games Workshop.

The new Warhammer game is described as a persistent sandbox action-RPG with a single-player campaign that will have players fighting through a grim and secret war as the agents of the Inquisition. Once players have completed the single-player campaign, they’ll be able to continue within a “colossal sandbox game” that NeocoreGames says will offer “years of constant entertainment, gradual development and a continuous flow of content that enriches the action-RPG gameplay.”

No further information was given regarding the game's story, characters, or environment. It appears action-RPGs with a large, expanding world appears to be quite popular these days as Dragon Age: Inquisition and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt have gained a lot of attention post release. Bethesda's Fallout 4 will undoubtedly offer a similar experience once it's released later this year, and depending on when it's released, we could be enjoying open-world action-RPGs well into late 2016, possibly even early 2017.

Jeez, Games Workshop is giving out 40K licences like water at a charity 5K. Having said that, these Van Helsing developers seem to be pretty solid. Here's hoping they can make one of the rare, actually good 40K games!

it's very shameless in its sheer amount of over the top, and is kind of a great snapshot of 'what would happen if you had humans. elves vs. orcs ... BUT IN SPACE!'

and it tends to have fairly awesome (again, shameless and over the top) artwork, very shameless and over the top lore, and some surprisingly good books that aren't really very shameless or over the top.

Back when the games were first conceived, they were fairly amusing parodies of 80's British sci-fi and fantasy - an over-the-top portrayal 2000AD's popular Grimdark style, for example, or making the Orcs a mockery of Yob culture (most closely analogous to soccer hooliganism, if you're unfamiliar with the term).

Over time, however, they've begun to become the thing they were parodying (either because focus-testing has shown that that's what the audience wants or because the company has lost touch with it's own product, depending on whom you believe.)

I've never really played the tabletop games (my brother did), but I kind of grow up with the universe. I remember back in the late 80's they'd have stores you could walk into that were dedicated to tabletop gaming and selling figurines.

That doesn't say anything about the universe, but what drew me in was that I was a big fan of the artwork. I was a big fan of White Dwarf / Games Workshop / Citadel's stuff, and couldn't wait for the next issue of each magazine to come out so I could find new techniques for painting my figures.

Okay here's one example: Space Marines don't know how to build their own technology.

The secret to all of their technology was lost a bazillion years ago, so every single terminator suit, every single weapon and whatnot is a true-to-the-word RELIC. Their entire religion is based around this and it's why they have this really cool combination of religion and engineers. The people that maintain the equipment so it lasts as long as possible are like the priests - they are the ones doing the most important work. Every time they lose equipment in a skirmish it's FOREVER.

The rest of the lore is similarly original and badass.

I am probably butchering this entire explanation and the actual lore nerds are raging at everything I said because I actually don't know the lore well at all but that's my high-level understanding from video games.

I don't think that's 100% true. The techpriests can produce some hardware, and are always looking to recover lost patterns. However, you're right in that a lot of the larger and more advanced technology is beyond them. Perhaps more importantly, Imperial technology in WH40K is stagnant. By and large people aren't researching and inventing new things. They can reproduce things they have patterns for, but their understanding of the technology and ability to improve it is limited.

Yeah, this is the case. They can still make new equipment and everything (even new Titans), but their technology is almost entirely stagnant and lots of useful knowledge has been lost over time. Innovation is heresy too, so if they lose access to a technology (say, through the only manufacturing plant left for that item being destroyed), it's lost for good.

"It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor of Mankind has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the vast Imperium of Man for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day so that he may never truly die.Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat to humanity from aliens, heretics, mutants -- and far, far worse. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods."

That's all you really need to know. Space Marines are intergalactic badasses who wear sweet armour and fuck people up with giant weapons in accordance with the Emperor's wishes. Not much more needs to be said, really.

So here's the deal with WH40K. Back in the eighties, Western Europe (and in this case, Great Britain) was stuck between the two superpowers threatening each other. No matter what happened, if things went to shit the Brits would be right in the middle of the flying nukes and possibly quickly overrun by the Soviets.

The situation was bleak, the outlook was bleak, the future was bleak. Fuck the system because we're all gonna die anyway, Thatcher is kicking us down, what's the point of it all? People couldn't really identify with happy go lucky sci-fi with heroes fighting colourful aliens, or with a flawless superman fighting the one-dimensional EVIL villain. World was shit, the stories needed to be shit too. Stories about flawed characters, suffocating depression and suffering and bleakness gained a hold: Judge Dredd and WH40K being the most obvious examples.

The universe in 40K is pointless, filled with death and suffering. Maybe it's so great because we can say "at least it ain't that bad", or because we like the idea of small heroics that are ultimately pointless in the greater workings of the universe. If your lows are tremendously low, any high your can find will seem that much higher.

The world of man? Completely fucked: untold trillions live on planets and work in vast factories that span entire planets. Corrupt governors, fallout and gang-wars make every day life look like absolute hell. Most technology has been lost in the aeons and people literally worship old machines that still work. You wanna know how they fix a tank? They patch it up here and there, run a check on its systems and say prayers and perform rituals to appease the Machine Spirit (which may or may not exist). A Gestapo-esque order within the government searches the millions of worlds for sources of corruption by Chaos and is willing to annihilate an entire planet to stop the corruption. Millions of soldiers die EACH day in trenches around the universe at the hands of horrible monsters, fearsome magic and disgusting mutations. Commanders form walls of these Guardsmen to protect the way more valuable tanks. If you have the rare trait of being a psyker (a magic user), you will either fall prey to a demon that opens a portal in your head, fucks his way through your body with a spikey sword and then melt your brain while he bursts into our universe. If the Inquisition finds you, you're captured and shipped off to become a sacrifice to feed the God-Emperor (which is, by the way, a undead husk on a throne whose psychic abilities is basically the only thing keeping the Empire of men together). If you're one of the lucky humans, you live a decent life on a peaceful planet. That is, until world-eating aliens, sadistic slavers, ravenous Orks or corrupted guardsmen invade your planet and destroy everything.
You have the Space Marines stationed near you? Good for you! Those guys have been tortured and altered and brainwashed so heavily that they're walking tanks who care not for what it takes to get rid of the enemy. You're standing between him and an Ork? Better believe that massive chainsawsword (chainsaw AND A sword, yes, your 12-year old self may now squeal in delight) will cut right through you without hesistation. Also, these guys fall to the corruption of Chaos like every day, so those unstoppable juggernauts just became stronger AND evil.
Oh yeah, this is how humans travel through space: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3246524/grimdarkgrimdark.jpg

Rest of the universe?Orks: fucking humanoid mushrooms who spawn faster than you can rebuild your cities, who only live to fight. They're huge, their always looking for WAAAAAAGH and if they land on your planet you'll never get truly rid of them. Sometimes one big Ork organizes some of the clans under his banner and basically loot and pillage entire solar systems. If all Orks would somehow unite, nothing would be able to stop the Green Wave. Also they yell DAKKA DAKKA, are convinced red vehicles go faster and their vehicles look like garbage cans with sawingblades attached.

Chaos: Humans who turned to the dark gods of Chaos and daemons. Four gods: Khorne (blood for the blood god) who only cares for bloodshed, Nurgle who spreads the most vile diseases ever (imagine a living zombie-ship that shoots superAIDS), Slaneesh who wants to fuck you and rip off your testicles at the same time and calls it pleasure and lastly Tzeentch who controls magic and can plan thousands of years into the future. All their underlings are either monstrously powerful Chaos Space Marines or horrific fusions of demons and machines. If they land on your planet, you better hope they kill you fast. They always wage ware against humanity and try to draw reality into the Warp (their cozy Chaos version of the universe).

Eldar: High Elves, very rare, rather kill off a solar system of humans than let one of their spaceships be destroyed. One of the few races that can be considered 'good', but they're so few and so arrogant that they're generally only sacrificing millions of people to delay the unevitable.

Dark Eldar: Sadistic slavers who kidnap people and torture them for sport. SM elves to the extreme, Hellraiser's pinhead would love these guys.

Tau: Weird space-aliens that want everyone to work together under the Greater Good philosophy, but there's something wrong with it all. Generally the only guys who can now be considered 'good'.

Necron: Unstoppable robots housing ancient spirits, wielding giant Gauss-rifles and are spread out over the entire world ready to wake up and destroy all life in the universe? Check!

Tyranids: Starcraft's Zerg is basically a carbon-copy of these guys, but Tyranids are way more numerous. Way, way more. They originate from outside the known galaxy and they're relatively new. Billions of these organic killing machines descent on solar systems and destroy everything in their way. What they destroy is converted into biomass in order to create more Tyranids. Two giant fleets of Tyranids have been stopped with utmost difficulty, and apparently the God-Emperor's psychic mind is drawing all Tyranids towards it.

So there you have it: no matter who you are, no matter what you do. You're completely and utterly fucked in the Warhammer 40k universe. This slow descent into utter and complete destruction of everything is awful, depressing and suffocating, but that's why it's so great.

That, and that you have giant warrior-heroes firing cannonshells out of their pistols at towering hell-spawn and psykers screaming because their head literally turns inside out while they're casting a giant spell.

TVTropes ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/Warhammer40000 ) used to have this fantastic description of WH40K. They've broken it down into a number of sub-pages now, so this description no longer exists on their main site, but I found it elsewhere (in reply - can't post more than 5000 characters for some reason):

Gabe: Well, isn't the enemy of your enemy, like, your friend? Or whatever? Can't they team up?
Tycho: Not exactly. In this setting, the enemy of your enemy is still a floating, greasy, armored brain.
Gabe: Well, what about his enemy? Maybe you could be friends with him.
Tycho: No, because that guy is a mechanical horror in an undying battle shell. He sails from world to world in a flying tomb, serving gods who eat hope.
--Penny Arcade on Warhammer 40000.

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war!

Only the insane have the strength to prosper. Only those who prosper can truly judge what is sane.

Warhammer 40,000 is a tabletop strategy game by Games Workshop. Drawing heavily on their previous Warhammer Fantasy game, it began as "Warhammer In Space", but it has grown to include more Sci-Fi elements of its own.

Thirty-eight thousand years in the future, the mighty Imperium of Mankind has spread across the galaxy, to discover that the galaxy is a hell that would make Hieronymous Bosch **** himself in terror, and that it has a hell. From without, the Imperium is assailed by alien monsters from the depths of space, nightmare death-machines and soulless daemons; from within, treachery, heresy, mindless incompetence and the festering taint of Chaos threaten to tear it apart.

Warhammer 40,000 is not a happy place. Rather than just being Darker And Edgier, it paints itself black and hurls itself over the edge. The Imperium of Man is an oppressive, stark, and downright miserable place to live in where, for far too many people, living isn't something to do until you die, but something to do until something comes around and kills you in an unbelievably horrible way - quite probably someone on your own side. The Messiah has been locked up on life support for the past ten millennia, laid low by his most beloved son, and an incomprehensibly vast Church Militant commits hourly atrocities in his name.

The problem is, as bad as the Imperium is, the other forces in the galaxy are generally far, far worse. Death is about the best you can hope for against the vast majority of the other major players in the battlefields of the 41st Millennium. The basic premise of 40k is as a constant, impossibly vast conflict between genocidal, xenocidal and in one case omnicidal civilisations, with every single weapon, ideology and creative piece of nastiness turned up to eleven. (The basic sidearm of a Space Marine is a fully automatic armour-piercing rocket-propelled grenade launcher. The Astronomican, a navigation aid, has the souls of thousands of psychic humans sacrificed to it every day, dying by inches to feed the machine. The faster-than-light travel used by most factions carries with it a good chance of being eaten by daemons.) There is no time for peace, no respite, no forgiveness; there is only war.

The 40k universe is a playground of tropes and horrible things taken to their absolute extreme. Entire planets with populations of billions are lost due to rounding errors in tax returns. Orders of capricious, fanatical, genetically engineered Super Soldier Knights Templar serve as the Imperium's special forces, while its regular armies have for the last ten millennia been enjoying a galaxy-spanning re-enactment of the Great War, with lasers. The ancient and debased manipulator-race contrive wars that see billions dead; their depraved cousins cannot live without torturing numberless innocents to in unimaginably horrible ways. There's a Bug Swarm trying to eat everything in the galaxy, a light-years wide hole in reality through which countless daemons and corrupted super-soldiers periodically attempt to destroy the universe, and an entire civilisation of undying Omnicidal Maniacs serving their star-god masters' desire to exterminate all living creatures, everything down to the last bacterium. Everywhere you go, there's the genetically-engineered survivor warrior species that's infesting every corner of the galaxy and cheerfully trying to kill everything else in the galaxy because it's literally hard-wired into their genetic code. The closest thing to the good guys you can find in this setting is a tiny alien empire sandwiched between all the other factions, and they have a thing for forcing new subjects into their empire through orbital bombardment, sterilization, and concentration camps.

As well as the game itself and its rulebooks, faction-specific, setting-specific and campaign sourcebooks, 40k has spawned a range of spinoff games and publications. Over sixty 40k novels and short story anthologies are published by the Black Library, a subsidiary of Games Workshop (the makers of the tabletop board game), who also published the now out-of-print comic book Warhammer Monthly and short story magazine Inferno. Spinoff tabletop games exist such as the space combat game Battlefleet Gothic and large-scale strategy Epic 40,000. A small but growing number of 40k videogames have also been made, of which the most recent are Warhammer 40,000: Dawn Of War, a Real Time Strategy game for the PC, and Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command, a turn-based tactical game.

Oh, LOL, I just noticed most of this description is actually still on that main page. Just have to open their little tabs. :-P

Really though, the TV tropes article is a pretty good look at the setting and lore from an "outside" perspective (as opposed to an "inside" perspective you'd find on something like http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Main_Page - there's an assload of lore to check out if you're interested).

I can't think of a single other IP that gets whored out so easily. There's a new 40K PC game announced just about every week, most of them from crap developers. Games Workshop is happy to just keep whoring themselves out cheaply, knowing that their diehard fans will gobble it up regardless of the quality. They could really put themselves back on the map if they actually put some effort in. Perhaps if the fans would stop buying the crap, that would actually give them an incentive :(

Games Workshop are under the impression that good games will steal sales from the tabletop somehow (as opposed to them being possibly the best way to grow their brand amongst new audiences, which is the more likely case) so I wouldn't put it past them to only open their IP to the companies offering the most money but the least actual ability.